Local historian and Green Cemetery trustee James Boakes is teaming with the Deptford library as it hosts a presentation about the graveyard’s history on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at 6:30 p.m.
The cemetery – located next to the library on Tanyard Road – traces its roots to the 1880s, according to its website, and is the final resting place of a Civil War general and a number of former New Jersey governors and legislators, among other important figures. It is named after founder Lewis Green.
“Beginning in the 1880s,” notes the website, “this cemetery was envisioned by its creator – Dr. Lewis Michael Green, a local entrepreneur, as a ‘rustic county garden.'”
Green purchased the former Methodist-Episcopal Cemetery, now known as West Park A and B, then bought three neighboring plots of land to create the original 22-acre graveyard, the website explained. In 1887, Green formally began operating the Green Cemetery as a sole proprietorship in 1887.
Green died seven years later, and the second codicil of his will declared the cemetery an operating trust. It is now in the hands of the New Jersey Cemetery Board (NJCB) and the Surrogate’s Court of Gloucester County.
Boakes – a trustee since 2020 – reached out to the library about doing a presentation on Green Cemetery and the lives of those who rest there, according to his LinkedIn page. The library agreed due to the close proximity to the graveyard and to give participants an opportunity to find an ancestor who may be buried there.
“He has been interested in this since he was a young man,” said Reference Librarian Michelle Burns. “He has been instrumental in cleaning up the cemetery, maintaining the headstones and answering queries from people who do genealogical research and find they have a relative there.
“The presentation will be about the history of the cemetery and the colorful local folks buried there, as well as the ongoing preservation work and the future of this historic treasure.”
The event is free and doesn’t require a library card at the Deptford Library.
“I think it will be interesting to many who are curious about local history,” Burns noted.
